According to the Lancet Medical Journal, the death toll in Iraq- the number of people killed since the invasion in 2003 - has reached 655,000.

The awful thing is that high figures such as these have become familiar. They are the outcome of three years of invasion, occupation and sectarian conflict unleashed by the US's military adventure.

This is the human price paid by Iraqi people in return for their "liberation" and the removal of a dictator. Such a huge sacrifice in only three years marks one of the darkest chapters of modern history. The fact that 21st century humanity allows such open barbarism to take place at all is criminal.

When I saw this figure I thought about the many women who were made widows and the many children who lost their fathers, mothers and loved ones. This is not the only figure to come out of Iraq; the whole population has been turned into a series of numbers and statistics, all of them victims of the occupation.

Throughout the last three years journalists have been asking me for the number of women who have been killed, raped and kidnapped, to flesh out their articles. But I sometimes wonder why we have to reduce human suffering to statistics. Is it not enough to know that Iraq is a war zone, torn apart by feuding Islamist militias and an occupation force guilty of countless crimes against humanity and abuses of the most basic rights?

When we see the daily news of suicide bombings and sectarian attacks in Iraq, claiming more and more lives we have been conditioned to stay calm. That is what the occupation has done; it has reduced Iraqi people and their lives to statistics in a news story.

What we are witnessing in Iraq is ethnic and religious "cleansing" in the making. We are witnessing Islamist militias killing women and attacking civilians on a daily basis, as a show of power against the occupation and rival Islamist factions. We are witnessing rape, abduction, and the murder of people who simply happened to be born into the wrong family, either Sunni or Shia. It is the occupation that has created an atmosphere in which all these atrocities can take place, and they cannot be reduced to statistics.

The fundamental claim made by the US and UK governments when invading Iraq was that their war would bring about freedom. It has done just that; it has given freedom to sectarian militias to terrorise civilians, abuse women and murder almost at will. It has given freedom to American corporations to plunder Iraq's resources. It has given freedom to occupying troops to bring whole cities and towns, such as Falluja and Haditha to a standstill through their air raids and sieges. It has not only given freedom but the control of a country to a bunch of thieves, warlords and tribalists, whose only interest is consolidating and extending their own power.

No amount of cold, sterile statistics should numb us to the shocking human suffering that the occupation has forced upon Iraq. For that suffering to end, the occupation must end and the criminals who engineered this human catastrophe and the system they represent must be dealt with.